Lucent Technologies Inc. this week announced two new models of “carrier-class” firewall/VPN equipment aimed for use in perimeter defence by ISPs, telecom companies as well as large enterprises.
The Brick Model 300 can support up to 300,000 simultaneous connections to the firewall with up to 560Mbps throughput, though the VPN capability is limited to the Lucent VPN client. The Model 500 supports 500,000 simultaneous connections, and has an Ethernet port and up to 4 gigabit ports for gigabit-speed throughput. Other models in Lucent’s Brick series of firewall/VPNs were limited to a maximum 100,000 simultanous connections.
“The Model 500 works like a switch, with [quality of service] and [virtual LAN] capability,” said Camille Milsort, Lucent’s senior technical manager, about the top of the line model which costs US$30,995, and is expected to ship at the end of the month. The Model 300, which costs US$11,995, is available now.
Due to interoperability issues the security industry has been embroiled in for some time in getting IPSec VPNs to work across vendor boundaries, Lucent will vouch only that its own VPN client will work well with the brick firewall/VPNs to establish a secure connection between the client and gateway point.
